Boat hoists are a conventional means of storing boats during the boating season and there are many hoists that one can use for this purpose. Such boat hoists are constructed such that there is a stationary stand which supports a rack which rack is movable in the stationary stand. The movable rack is provided with guides so that it will stay essentially centered in the stationary stand and there is a series of pulleys, and cables that are attached to the movable rack and which accommodates the raising and lowering of the movable rack. The cable is thus attached on one location of the stationary stand, moved through various pulleys, and the opposite end is attached to the hub of a cable winch which facilitates the storage of the cable as it is wound unto the hub when the movable rack is raised. When the movable rack is lowered, the cable unwinds from the hub, moves through the pulleys and allows the movable rack to be lowered. Each of the various boat hoists not only have their own design, but they traditionally have their own type of winch.
Some types of winches include those that are direct gear drives, chain drives, combinations of chain drives and gears, and the like.
These winches have several problems, one of which is that the gear drives use less space, but are hard to operate, do not lift heavy loads, and use only a pawl and rachet type of braking system.
On the other hand, those winches that use chain drives, or combinations of chain drives and gears tend to be very big in size and heavy, and they also generally are limited on the amount of load that they can lift.
In addition, electrical winches for this purpose have been used utilizing the electric power from batteries as a source of energy, or from conventional electricity sources, but those systems often fail when the electric components become wet.
One device of the prior art is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,326,398, issued Jun. 20, 1967 to Reed. This device deals with a boat loader for trailers wherein the boat can be moved up onto a trailer or removed from the trailer by the movement of an automobile that is attached to the trailer. The device uses a drum to collect cable and features a clutch mechanism for allowing the drum to freely rotate and release the cable when it is desired to move the boat from the trailer back into the water. However, this clutch is of the type that it is either completely off, or completely on and thus the boat movement off of the trailer is not easily controllable.
The device of the instant invention overcomes the problems stated above for the prior art devices.